The Lexicographer's Rules

"As I write this, I am sitting in the green grass across from the United Unions building on New York Avenue in Washington DC. I am only a block from the White House. There are currently two layers of security around the White House from what I can see. There is an outer layer has Secret Service and other police officers to turn back people and cars, and an inner on complete with road blocks."

—Yahoo Groups. Alison, a student at George Washington University, offers a personal report from Washington DC.'

"Still no word from my father. I just went outside and heard a plane overhead. On most days that would be a pretty normal thing. Today I wondered what was going on on that plane. A friend was coming to visit from Florida for the weekend. Now that's off. It's just beginning to sink in how much things have changed. Yesterday would it have made no sense to run a survey to ask if we are at war. Yesterday was a normal day. Today started normally too. I have a feeling that the takeaway from this will be There's No Time Like Now. Yeah, there's no time like now to start forgiving, to turn the other cheek, to show the world not that we're tough, but that we're commited to making the world a better place. Do I think our government will do that? No I don't."

—Scripting. Dave Winer is logging his thoughts and links relating to the attack on the World Trade Center.

"The structural system, deriving from the I.B.M. Building in Seattle, is impressively simple. The 208-foot wide facade is, in effect, a prefabricated steel lattice, with columns on 39-inch centers acting as wind bracing to resist all overturning forces; the central core takes only the gravity loads of the building. A very light, economical structure results by keeping the wind bracing in the most efficient place, the outside surface of the building, thus not transferring the forces through the floor membrane to the core, as in most curtain-wall structures. Office spaces will have no interior columns. In the upper floors there is as much as 40,000 square feet of office space per floor. The floor construction is of prefabricated trussed steel, only 33 inches in depth, that spans the full 60 feet to the core, and also acts as a diaphragm to stiffen the outside wall against lateral buckling forces from wind-load pressures."

—Great Buildings. The World Trade Center was designed by Minoru Yamasaki and was of a steel frame, glass curtain wall construction.'

"I just got back. I just drove five Polish tourists that were walking down the street asking people for directions to the hospitalÑthey were supposed to have visited the WTC this morningÑthey slept inÑI drove them to the hospital so they could give blood. There's a line at the hospital around the block. They are worried. They are stranded here. There's a layer of dust on the ground and still that sickly smell. Smoke is still pouring from the wreckage and people are walking down Fourth Avenue wearing dust masks. It's like a refugee march from Manhattan. Police are waiting at some corners trying to direct traffic, lots of black cars, sirens. The never-ending wail of sirens all morning. It's terrifying. I got a message from my boss at work, she says its chaos there, people are stranded. I'm so glad I never made it into Manhattan this morning. There's still a sickly smell in the air."

—Toothpick Girl. Photos and narrative about the World Trade Center attack.

"We are aware of our vulnerabilities now. We knew these things before, but we didn't feel them. We knew about the security tests at airport after airport that exposed shortcomings, in which laughably underpaid and undertrained personnel were expected to protect us. Now we see those shortcomings in action. We feel them. We knew about the arrogance and the cock-strutting of our military and police, who were convinced and convinced us they were the best in the world. Now the prideful boasting looks suspiciously like that of the British at the end of its empire."

—World New York. A first-person report in New York City, on the day of the plane attacks.'